How to Strike at the Root

Striking at the root centers on finding and fixing root causes, rather than hacking at the branches of the problem with solutions that should work, but don't.

The reason those solutions don't work is

The only way to solve a difficult problem
is to resolve its root causes.

Striking at the root has two main steps: find the root causes, then fix them. The first step makes or breaks your entire project. Get the root causes right and everything else is relatively easy because you are focusing on what matters the most. Get the root causes wrong and no amount of solution cleverness or hard work promoting the solution will work.

Understanding how root causes work

Root causes work like the way sap flows in a tree. Deep down in the roots, water and nutrients are turned into sap. This flows up the roots, up the trunk, along the branches, and to the many leaves on the tree. Each leaf is a symptom.

Root causes work the same as sap. Causal chains run from the root causes all the way up to symptoms. A causal chain is a flow of influence, also known as cause and effect. All problems stem from their root causes.

Difficult problems have many symptoms, just as a tree has many leaves. A difficult problem usually has multiple root causes, just as a tree has many roots. The roots of a problem connect to its symptoms with long chains of causal links. Thus:

A problem is a tree of causal links.

When a tree is transplanted, enough of its roots must be carefully dug up and moved with the tree, or the tree will wither or die. To solve a difficult problem, enough of its root causes must be carefully found and resolved, or when the solutions are implemented they will be temporary, partial, or fail altogether.

Click the tree to see how deep most popular solutions to the sustainability problem go. They attempt to solve intermediate causes. Thus they are superficial solutions and tend to not work nearly as well as they should because intermediate causes cannot be changed without changing their causes, which ultimately are the root causes.

But with root cause analysis we can go deep by tracing the causal chain, finding the root causes, and solving them. Click on the tree again to see how deep analysis must go to solve the problem. The analysis must go all the way down the trunk and below the ground to the normally hidden fundamental layer of the problem, so we can find the root causes and resolve them with fundamental solutions.

Visualizing how the tree of causal links works is the key to being able to analyze the sustainability problem and problems like it. Right from the start this ability determines success or failure. So let's take the above tree and rearrange it into a diagram that tells us even more.

In the diagram below the the tree is on the right. Click on it to see or hide the causal chain. Think of the leaves as the problem symptoms. The branches and trunk are the long chains of intermediates causes. The roots of the tree are the root causes of the problem.

The left side of the diagram allows the analytical problem solver to see what matters when doing root cause analysis. The key strategy is to break through the superficial layer (which is easy to see and requires no serious analysis) and penetrate into the fundamental layer of the problem. This is difficult to see, which is what makes a problem difficult. It's the part of the problem that's below ground. The only way to see what's in the fundamental layer of a problem is to dig down deep into the problem with some serious analysis.

Once you've penetrated the fundamental layer you can correctly see the root causes and then, with a little more work, their fundamental solutions. These will usually be surprisingly different from the superficial solutions that were being applied, so when you propose your fundamental solutions you may encounter disbelief and resistance. But if you point to the specific root causes the fundamental solutions are resolving, that disbelief and resistance will melt away, and your solutions will be embraced.

The best part is fundamental solutions can solve the problem because they resolve its root causes. Superficial solutions cannot solve problems because they are directed at intermediate causes. No matter how clever a superficial solution is, or how long its applied, or how much money is poured into promoting it, a superficial solution can never fully and permanently solve a problem. Only root causes can do that.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.